麻豆社

Lisa Snowden-Carr is the co-owner of Roots Caf茅 in Bath Place, Taunton and has built her business around this principle.

鈥淚t鈥檚 not about politics or anything like that. I just like to see green spaces and trees and I want to be able to enjoy that,鈥� she said.

鈥淭his is my little way of helping and offering my customers a choice.鈥澨�

But like any good businesswoman, Lisa, 37, still has to keep an eye on profit and freely admits she will only make changes that make good business sense.

She cuts down her food miles by buying local produce and buys organic where she can. Her latest green measure is to use recyclable coffee cups.

The cups were custom made especially for the cafe

鈥淚t has taken me 18 months to find any, but they are proving very popular.鈥�

The main problem was price. After an initial investigation she discovered that most cardboard cups were 鈥減rohibitively expensive鈥�; around three times the price of plastic ones.

The solution: she had them custom made by the manufacturers who supplied her with recycled wooden forks and napkins. She said the advantage was the cups weren鈥檛 coated in plastic to keep the heat in, unlike many of the recycled cups on the market.

Her cups work out at about 5p each and are made from recycled cardboard using renewable energy sources.听

She said: 鈥淚 wanted something that could be recycled and was made from an ethical background.

鈥淭hese look the business, they are a comparable price to the plastic ones and I can brand them using my own stamp.

Customers can leave their own mugs there as well

鈥淲e鈥檝e got cardboard cup holders to keep the heat in so there鈥檚 no need to coat them in plastic.鈥�

And if you don鈥檛 fancy drinking out of a cardboard cup you are welcome to bring your own.

The former quality and assurance manager has a row of china mugs hanging beneath the stairs that her customers have left to use when they drop by.

Her next challenge is to find a type of cardboard container for olives and sun dried tomatoes that won鈥檛 leak. So if anyone has any suggestions- please let her know.